[Page 210]

An ODE to WILLIAM PULTNEY, Esq;

By the Same.
I.
1 REMOTE from liberty and truth,
2 By fortune's crime, my early youth
3 Drank error's poison'd springs.
4 Taught by dark creeds and mystick law,
5 Wrapt up in reverential awe,
6 I bow'd to priests and kings.
II.
7 Soon reason dawn'd, with troubled sight
8 I caught the glimpse of painful light,
9 Afflicted and afraid.
10 Too weak it shone to mark my way,
11 Enough to tempt my steps to stray
12 Along the dubious shade.
[Page 211]
III.
13 Restless I roam'd, when from afar
14 Lo HOOKER shines! the friendly star
15 Sends forth a steady ray.
16 Thus cheer'd, and eager to pursue,
17 I mount, till glorious to my view,
18 LOCKE spreads the realms of day.
IV.
19 Now warm'd with noble SIDNEY'S page,
20 I pant with all the patriot's rage;
21 Now wrapt in PLATO'S dream,
22 With MORE and HARRINGTON around
23 I tread fair Freedom's magick ground,
24 And trace the flatt'ring scheme.
V.
25 But soon the beauteous vision flies;
26 And hideous spectres now arise,
27 Corruption's direful train:
28 The partial judge perverting laws,
29 The priest forsaking virtue's cause,
30 And senates slaves to gain.
VI.
31 Vainly the pious artist's toil
32 Would rear to heaven a mortal pile,
33 On some immortal plan;
34 Within a sure, tho' varying date,
35 Confin'd alas! is every state
36 Of empire and of man.
[Page 212]
VII.
37 What tho' the good, the brave, the wise,
38 With adverse force undaunted rise,
39 To break th' eternal doom!
40 Tho' CATO liv'd, tho' TULLY spoke,
41 Tho' BRUTUS dealt the godlike stroke,
42 Yet perish'd fated ROME.
VIII.
43 To swell some future tyrant's pride,
44 Good FLEURY pours the golden tide
45 On Gallia's smiling shores;
46 Once more her fields shall thirst in vain
47 For wholsome streams of honest gain,
48 While rapine wastes her stores.
IX.
49 Yet glorious is the great design,
50 And such, O PULTNEY! such is thine,
51 To prop a nation's frame.
52 If crush'd beneath the sacred weight,
53 The ruins of a falling state
54 Shall tell the patriot's name.

Text

  • TEI/XML [chunk] (XML - 96K / ZIP - 11K) / ECPA schema (RNC - 357K / ZIP - 73K)
  • Plain text [excluding paratexts] (TXT - 1.8K / ZIP - 1.2K)

Facsimile (Source Edition)

(Page images digitized by the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive from a copy in the archive's library.)

Images

PDF

All Images (PDF - 2.1M)

About this text

Title (in Source Edition): An ODE to WILLIAM PULTNEY, Esq;
Author: Robert Craggs Nugent, Earl Nugent
Themes: philosophical enquiry; religion; patriotism; glory of the British nation
Genres: ballad metre; ode; panegyric
References: DMI 22424

Text view / Document view

Source edition

Dodsley, Robert, 1703-1764. A Collection of Poems in Six Volumes. By Several Hands. Vol. II. London: printed by J. Hughs, for R. and J. Dodsley, 1763 [1st ed. 1758], pp. 210-212. 6v.: music; 8⁰. (ESTC T131163; OTA K104099.002) (Page images digitized by the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive from a copy in the archive's library.)

Editorial principles

The text has been typographically modernized, but without any silent modernization of spelling, capitalization, or punctuation. The source of the text is given and all editorial interventions have been recorded in textual notes. Based on the electronic text originally produced by the TCP project, this ECPA text has been edited to conform to the recommendations found in Level 5 of the Best Practices for TEI in Libraries version 4.0.0.